I happened to see an article about an ex-employee, from one of the organizations that I ran, running to the media to be a whistle blower about how statistics were doctored to report higher live release rates. With so much pressure being placed on shelter managers, the risk is high that statistics could be doctored to make the shelter look like it has a higher live release rate that it does.
Often, animal shelters might document that the relinquishing owner has surrender the animal for euthanasia because the animal is sick. In most cases, the city/county will investigate and find nothing wrong; unfortunately time and effort has to be spent responding to a disgruntled (ex-) employee.
Due to people like this, it is becoming more and more important to track changes to animal intake records to show who is making changes after the fact. When purchasing an animal shelter software tool, asked about change reporting within the software.
If changes are made to the software entry, they usually occur at the time of disposition (when the decision is made to euthanize the animal). The intake entry is changed to justify the euthanasia. Change reporting will track who made any changes to the animal’s record and when. This reporting ability is equally important to show that no such change occurred.